


Earth Has No Sorrow

by Ori_Cat



Category: Relic Master Series - Catherine Fisher
Genre: Apostasy, Gen, Telepathy, Terrorism, The Watch - Freeform, Torture, killing people in the line of duty, y'know just standard Watch stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: And that was how, on a cold clear morning in the beginning of autumn, Elis Quist lost his religion.





	Earth Has No Sorrow

It was easy, really. Easier than he had expected. 

This is what he did: he woke early, the sunrise barely a smudge on the eastern horizon, and dressed quietly and quickly as he could within the darkness. Left the books. Left the supplies. Left everything, and snuck out while his master was still sleeping. 

There was a checkpoint a few hours walk up the road - he knew because he had passed it, a week ago. Just one week. It felt much longer, now. 

Not that it hadn’t been a busy week. 

They would have gone ahead, before. Through the town, and then on towards the coast. There were larger cities there, places where they could have vanished among all the people and the bustle, where they could maybe have gone unnoticed for years, where they could have stayed. His master was always lamenting how there were no town keepers, how some continuity was necessary for successful ministry, and he knew he just wanted to find somewhere to possibly settle, if not for good, for a good long while. 

So much for that, now. He turned to his left, instead, at the junction of the path and the main road, where a single fence post embedded with nails still stood, a testament to someone’s use of the land years past. 

Only the brightest stars were still shining, this close to dawn, and the road, thoroughly dried out after the rain of a few days ago, reflected pale against the reds of the trees. Cart ruts and the edges of other travellers’ footprints crumbled under his boots as he walked. 

(He buried the beads. Three inches down, in the litter at the roots of a maple tree. Because that was what you did with dead things, wasn’t it?) 

The sun had slid to about two fingers’ width above the horizon, drenching the world in honey-yellow light, when the checkpoint came into view. There was no-one else there, of course, and the shutter was pulled shut against the cool of the air. He came up, raised a hand, and lowered it again. 

A clank, someone muttering inside - he thought he caught the words “ungodly hour” - and the shutter was pulled open. The woman inside looked highly disgruntled at the time, or maybe she just always was. “Papers.” 

No turning back now (wasn’t that what they’d always said? He almost wanted to laugh at the irony of it.) He sucked in a deep breath, holding it until the spaces between his ribs ached and all the oxygen was gone. Let the weight of his chest let it out again. 

“I want to enlist.” 

And that was how, on a cold clear morning in the beginning of autumn, Elis Quist lost his religion. 

* * *

They gave him a number - 8472 - and an insignia, and a uniform, and a posting. They give him a list of rules, and told him to memorize them; a commander, and told him to obey. 

They gave him a bow, and told him to shoot. To stand still, and not to focus on either bow or target when he shot. To let the trigger slide back instead of yanking. To load and unload in seconds, to breathe in at the aim and breathe out as the bolt slid free. 

And then how to do it from horseback. 

They taught him how to swing a sword, how to curse and how to lie, what codes had to be used on what communications. They taught him map-reading and tent-pitching, ways to eavesdrop on the locals. Ways to eavesdrop on the other Watchmen. 

How much water a person needed, really needed, so that they wouldn’t die on the trek to the nearest prison. What kind of bindings could be slipped and which wouldn’t come loose even if someone dislocated their own shoulders. How to kill a person fast, and how not to kill a person for a very long time. 

(Breathe out.) 

* * *

It was pretty much a consensus opinion, at least in the circles he found himself in: checkpoints were terrible. Not having to pass through them - that was now as easy as breathing, you didn’t need papers when you had the uniform and the insignia as testament to your character - but having to man them? Depending on who you asked, it was boring, exhausting, a waste of good time, boring, a waste of good talents, too likely to be in the back end of nowhere, completely lacking in any respect, and boring. No one in their right mind would do it voluntarily. 

He was beginning to understand it, now. The morning was barely half-over, and already he wanted nothing more than to go right back to sleep. And not to talk to anyone for three days. Some of that could be chalked up to it being the end of the week - most markets were doubly busy then, and of course it was the holiday tomorrow so even more people would be travelling. If you had a visit to make it was tradition to do it on the holiday. 

Quist waved up the next person, a stocky dark-bearded man leading a marset pulling a cart filled with barrels. The papers were slapped down on the table, and he scooped them up, glanced over the boxes. It became just the same motion after a while. “All right,” he said, and flipped the pages back over, setting the papers down in front of him. “Toll?” 

The man dug into his pocket. “Three, right?” 

“Four.” 

The man dropped the toll into his upturned palm, and he slid the papers back across the table, the man reaching out to receive them. 

And the world became fire, a ball of flame rising up over the city, sloughing the flesh from his own bones, and Tholem’s, and everyone near them, turning them into nothing but so much ash. A shockwave enough to rattle teeth in their sockets and bleed ears, and smoke drifted skywards in a dark cloud to blot out the sun - 

The man’s fingers were still just brushing the edge of the papers when he found his voice. “Wait.” It sounded… normal, and he was grateful for that. Something to be said for impassivity. 

The man drew back, defensive now. “I thought you said it looked fine?” 

“Just a random check,” he lied. “Every thirtieth person. Nearly forgot.” The man did his best not to smirk, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. After all, it wasn’t every day one caught a Watchman off his game. 

He caught Tholem’s eye - _take some of my people, I need to search this one_ \- and stepped out from behind the table. 

“What did you say was in here?” 

“Apples.” The man’s hand was resting on the edge of the cart, very deliberately not closed. 

“You won’t mind if I check, of course.” Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the pry-bar and slipped it between the lid and wall of the nearest barrel, leaning until the wood came free and he could lever the lip up and off. 

He peered inside, pry-bar still in hand. There were, indeed, apples. The green type for pies, tinged with red and packed like a honeycomb, and he knew without looking that the man was staring at him smugly, having known that this was what he was going to find, having known that it was Quist that would look the fool if apples really was all. Quist dug his hand down along the side of the barrel, shifting fruit as he did so. 

The man sniffed at him, a cross between irritated and smug. “C’mon, you can see it’s apples,” he said. “Can I just go through now?” 

And his fingers touched something that was not fruit, or sawdust, but felt like a cloth of linen, coarsely woven, and only two palms deep inside the barrel too. He peeled up a corner of that as well only for his hand to sink into soft dry powder, finer than sand, that closed in around all his knuckles and jammed itself into the crevices around his fingernails. And when he pulled his hand out and held it up his fingers were coated in black. 

He watched the man realize that it was useless to run, eyes widening in sudden fear. The price for treason, and for plotting against the Watch, was much too high. And as he called the guards over, and they bound the man’s hands and took him, and his cart, and his market away, Quist never once took his eyes from him, that blast that thank Flain would now never happen ringing in his ears. 

And then he had tarried long enough, and was forced to take the next person, and the next, and the next. 

“So what was Apple Guy smuggling, anyway?” Tholem asked a few hours later, once they had been released and as they turned the corner back into the Watchhouse’s cobbled yard. 

“See for yourself.” The man who had taken the cart had just left it there, still loaded, in the yard. (Of course, he’d locked the gate and that was as much responsibility as Quist was learning he could depend on anyone to take.) He hadn’t even unhitched the marset, which was still standing stiffly between the traces. Bastard. The thing was Watch property now, and they ought to take better care of it. 

While Tholem poked through the cart’s contents, Quist unbuckled the harness and led the creature to one of the hitching rings hammered into the stone of the wall, its feet padding against the stones. There was no lead, so he used the reins, looping them up three times to keep it from getting a foot caught. And if it broke, it broke. 

“Holy -“ He pulled the knot tight and turned to see Tholem take two quick steps back, staring suspiciously at the cart. “That is… genuinely concerning.” 

Understatement of the year, that was. That much black powder? That could take down an entire street of buildings and kill hundreds of people, all in one moment of fire. More, probably, considering how busy the city was today, on the holiday. It made him almost sick to think about it; if he’d let that man go through, by now he, and Tholem, and so many others would have been nothing but smears of blood and ash on the cobblestones. 

“How did you _know_?” 

He shrugged. “He wasn’t… acting right,” he lied. 

“Uncomfortable-like?” Tholem asked. Both of them knew that wasn’t a very good metric, considering that half of all innocent people got uneasy under Watch scrutiny as well. Heck, even though checkpoints were perfectly streamlined for Watchmen he still felt weird having to go through them anywhere but at the local Watchhouse. 

“How about too calm? Too casual?” 

“Deliberately casual.” 

“Yeah,” he said. Which, well, was true. It just wasn’t the answer, really. 

Tholem let out a long shaky sigh. “Well, we’re done now,” he said. At least until tomorrow. “Want to go get something to drink?” 

“Are you going to buy?” 

“For that?” Tholem said, “I’ll buy you two.” 

* * *

“Quist! Come join us!” The hand waved in his direction held a mug of tea, which its owner impressively managed not to spill, considering that the better part of his attention was focussed on the cards he clutched in the other. 

(Well, “tea” for a given value of tea. Considering the amount of laughter coming from around the table, there was probably something else in there. He wasn’t going to ask.) 

He shook his head. “Not today, I think.” 

“Oh, come on.” 

“We can teach you!” 

“Enjoy yourself for once!” Someone laid down their cards, and there was a collective groan from around the table as the winner scooped up their pile of coins. The cards were gathered up and shuffled again. “Here, we can add you right now.” 

“I have a report to do,” he stated. This was not technically true - actually, it was not true even by non-technical standards, as he had finished it that morning - but he considered it a justified lie. 

“Aw, man!” 

“You’re pathetic!” 

“Maybe, but I’ll still have my money tomorrow,” he shot back, and turned to leave before they came up with some new insults. 

“You’re just scared to lose!” someone yelled after his back. 

Only once he got outside, only once dry leaves blown in drifts up against the door crunched under his feet, did he allow himself to smile ruefully towards the trees. _No. No, that’s not it at all._

* * *

Another burst of laughter erupted from the men at the bar, and Quist winced. God, would everyone just be quiet, would everyone just stop being so happy, stop taking up so much space, just stop, please. But he couldn’t demand any of that, could he. Absently, he raised a finger and drew a few streaks on the dark wood of the table in the condensation. 

He hadn’t even been hurt, was the thing. Nobody had, other than a few bruises where one horse had thrown its rider and a little bit of injured pride. At least, nobody had on their side. The bandits… well, that was what you got, for threatening a band of Watchmen. What had anyone damn well expected. 

Everything was just off, as though the sun had suddenly started rising in the west. 

Maybe it would be quieter outside. There would be fresh air, at least. Maybe that would help. Quist got up, chair scraping over the stones of the floor, and in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner headed for the back door, which had been propped half-open the entire evening. He barely had to shift it to get through. 

Outside, it was cooler, twilight giving way to a few of the brightest stars in the sky above the housetops. The tavern backed onto a small alley lined with cobblestones, and there was no-one in it at the moment, although the light from lanterns in windows still fell through and turned everything a faint orangeish. He scrubbed a hand over his face and leaned back against the tavern wall, close enough that the warmth and light from within still came through, but with a space before the doorpost as a buffer, too. 

Who knew what the group of bandits had been expecting, when they had emerged from the trees upon a group of travelling Watchmen, who knew why they’d thought such a gamble would be worth it. Although the life of a bandit was hard and desperate, and maybe it had been the Watch or nothing. Maybe they hadn’t had anything left to lose. And when the glint of light on their swords had come, and men had burst from the grass surrounding the band, the Watch had done what the Watch did best. All of them, even him. He hadn’t even thought it but something had taken over his muscles, all those hours days weeks of training, and the bolt had been in and his fingers on the trigger, and he’d fired where they’d said, horses’ necks, centre of mass - 

He’d felt the bandit die. Felt his life just flick out, like an ember in wet grass. Couldn’t even delude himself that maybe he’d been all right (yeah, sure, with a bolt right through his sternum), that maybe he wasn’t blooded and a murderer yet. 

The stone was cold and rough against his shoulder blades, and he shut his eyes and let his head fall back. Here’s how to kill a man, they’d said, but not here’s what it is, what it’ll do to you. Maybe he was supposed to have already known. 

For the first time, he realized he was shivering, and didn’t think it was just the cold. 

“You alright out there?” He couldn’t remember the name of the young Watchman standing in the doorway against the lamplight. Asher, maybe? Aaron? Something like that. 

“What’s it to you?” 

Asher-or-Aaron shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first man to get drunk as a boiled owl, crack his own head open. Be a shame.” 

“I’m not drunk.” 

That garnered him a raised eyebrow. “If you say so.” 

“Really.” Unravelling cell by cell, maybe, so weak as to be unable to wipe the feeling of that death from his mind, but at least sober for it all. He squeezed his eyes shut again, and let himself slide down the wall into a crouch. Stupid. Stupid idiot worthless, if he was going to fall apart first time, if he couldn’t even get in control of his own damn self - 

And he was not _supposed_ to be this shaken, that had been the entire point of the training. So that, when the time came, he wouldn’t hesitate at all. And he hadn’t, he hadn’t and wasn’t sure whether he should be proud or disgusted at that, but he didn’t know if he would or could ever do it again and how could this thing break him like this? And what if Asher-or-Aaron told. The Watch had to watch itself first, and it had no failures. 

And more than that, he would be nothing. What happened, to those who failed both the light and the darkness? 

He managed to peel his eyes open. 

Asher-or-Aaron was still looking at him, arms still folded, but there was something different about his expression now. Something almost sympathetic. “That was your first time, wasn’t it?” he asked. 

_Yes_ , he couldn’t make himself say. His lips had cleaved together, speech would be pain and blood. Instead, he turned his face away, which was as good an answer as any other, he supposed. 

He wanted to hear footsteps leaving. He wanted to hear silence. Instead, after a moment’s waiting, Asher-or-Aaron’s hand fell, warm and heavy, onto his shoulder. “It gets easier. I can tell you that.” 

* * *

The woman’s terror was like a dark cloud, filling the room into the corners. She didn’t look up when he entered, and with her dark dress and dark hair falling over her face all Quist could see of her in the few seconds before his eyes began to adjust were two pale hands and two pale feet in the restraints, dirty and bruised green. 

“Says she doesn’t know anything,” the other assigned interrogator - Rowan, her name was, and he would have loved to meet the parents who gave her that one - muttered to him as he passed her. “Still. But she had to have been the last person to see them…” 

Quist nodded Rowan off and closed the door behind him. As the bolt clicked shut, the woman tried and failed to suppress a sob. He wondered what Rowan had threatened her with. It better have been good, or else what he was about to try wasn’t going to work. 

Not for the first time, the thought floated up into his head that he could have just ripped the knowledge straight out of her mind, without having to go through all the rest of this. He immediately stomped on it, though; let the others find out and he’d find _himself_ strapped to a chair for whatever information they could pull on a master he hadn’t seen in five years. 

No. He had to be clever, and only passive. “Heard you still can’t remember,” he said, and moved to stand in front of her. Close enough to be threatening, but not within striking distance. Yet. 

“I’ve told you,” the woman sobbed, a few tears dropping onto her knees, “I don’t know! I don’t know where they went. All I told you, the main road out of town… I just saw them leave. And that was it.” 

“And this is true?” 

“Yes! Yes. I honestly don’t know.” The last word dissolved into another sob. 

Quist leaned down, until he was on the same level as her, and reached out, brushing back the hair from her face. The woman flinched away from the touch, didn’t look at him. When he’d tucked the strands back behind her ear, he let his voice soften. “I believe you,” he said, nodding. There was no lie in her mind, and never had been. Her small, hopeful noise was barely disguised. 

Sometimes, you could do more with a few words than with an army full of whips. _And the meek shall inherit the earth,_ his mind filled in. “Who would know?” he asked. 

The woman hesitated, but he felt her slipping. She just wanted it over. “Orek,” she whispered, ashamedly. “He spent more time with the keepers than most. I caught them talking once…” 

He smiled at her then, made it as genuine and grateful as he could. “All right,” he said. “Thank you. There’s nothing else we need.” 

After the woman had been returned her clothes and boots and released to return to her home, Quist found Rowan. “Was there a man named Orek down there?” 

“Yeah, I think so,” she answered. 

“Bring him in. He’s the one who knows where those men went.” 

She gave him a sideways look. “You’re good, Quist. How’d you make her spill?” 

“That would be telling,” he answered. And it wasn’t a lie, not really. 

* * *

The new commander was named Darmon, and Quist immediately did not like him. 

(Not that whether he liked people was relevant to anything - you did what you’re told, like it or hate it - but even so. Things to commiserate about around the tables and on the roads.) 

He would have thought that such a man as the commander would have been more useful in the regions of the larger cities - because he was a recruiter if anyone was, a blood-and-thunder, be-a-man-in-the-Watch, stories of guts and glory kind of person - but apparently he had been sent out here to Eyen, into the back end of nowhere, to watch woods and valleys with nothing but small villages and herds of migrating deer in them. At first, though, Quist didn’t ask questions, and nor did anyone else. He wasn’t entirely sure why none of them did, but asking questions was not a thing that was done in the Watch, and, well, nobody had ever asked why. 

They suffered under Darmon for five days before the next patrol arrived, set up their tents and watches and dice games in the woods around the outpost, and two more before two others appeared, and it had begun to look like there was something large afoot. Some operation that the brass were planning, somewhere near Eyen, that had not filtered down through the ranks yet. Rumours flew, of course, as fast as smokes and drink and gossip filtered from one patrol to the next. 

The questions that were not asked were answered the following afternoon, when all the men were called together, crammed into the spyroom at the outpost to listen to Darmon hand out orders. Apparently, the Watch had learned of an entire nest of keepers around here somewhere, who still held their people in thrall. They were responsible for succouring most of the Order that was left, and filthily bribing the townspeople into keeping them hidden. If they were gone, it would knock an entire foot out of any Order networks that were left, and might bring the Watch assurance of victory, eventually. 

Quist found himself surprised. He hadn’t known the Order was still strong enough for anything other than running - like mice into their holes, like clouds of flies that vanished with a wave of one’s hand. 

(He ignored the cord of blue light wound around his ribcage, flickering with the change of the days and seasons. That was nothing now.) 

“Where?” Someone asked the question no-one had been quite brave - or foolish, considering that he was a commanding officer - enough to ask. 

“We meet at Carmelan,” Darmon said. “The town is called Mathravale.”

**Author's Note:**

> *sings*...that heaven can't heal.
> 
> I love Quist so much. You think he's going to be some hardline Watchman, and then he turns out to be this soppy mess of confused apostasy and misuse by everyone.


End file.
